Yellow Wood Names Industry Veteran Alfie Vivian To Lead Elida Beauty

Yellow Wood Partners LLC has completed the acquisition of Elida Beauty brands from Unilever and has named Alfie Vivian as CEO of the newly independent company that is home to several iconic brand names in personal care.

The Elida Beauty portfolio includes Q-tips, Caress, Ponds and St. Ives (for North America and Europe only), Impulse, Noxzema, Monsavon and Timotei, among others. The company has offices in Dallas, London and Paris.

Vivian’s C-Level Experience

Vivian, a seasoned C-level consumer packaged goods executive, will work with the Yellow Wood team to develop the next chapter of the company’s growth. He was most recently served as senior VP/group general manager of Tyson Foods. Prior to that, he was with Unilever in different geographies for nearly 30 years in senior general management and brand building roles. He operated in North America for 10+ years managing multi-billion dollar businesses.

“Alfie’s and our collective brand building experience across North American and international markets will help unlock Elida’s global growth potential as a newly independent company,” said Tad Yanagi, partner at Yellow Wood.

Dana Schmaltz, Yellow Wood Partner, commented, “We have a successful formula and broad expertise to identify great consumer brands that can benefit from independent, focused ownership. The true nature of success in completing these corporate carveouts is based in the Yellow Wood Consumer Operating DNA strategy. This playbook, executed by our team, allows us to work seamlessly with the large global CPG companies to create the stand-alone operating infrastructures necessary to begin these brands’ evolution as independent companies. Our expertise allows us to do this in very short time frames which benefits the corporate seller, our retail partners and, most importantly, the brands and their consumers as these transitions can create confusion and brands can suffer. Elida Beauty is another example of our disciplined approach where we believe these brands can benefit from additional investment and highly focused attention as an independent company.”

Yellow Wood’s Beauty & Personal Business

This marks Yellow Wood’s second carve out from Unilever. The first was its acquisition of the Suave brand last year, which was completed in January. Overall,  Elida is Yellow Wood’s fifth corporate carve out in the last four years from large multi-national CPG companies that also include Bayer Pharmaceuticals, Reckitt Benckiser and  Haleon, according to Schmaltz.

“Yellow Wood’s creativity, entrepreneurial spirit, and commitment to excellence combined with the Elida Beauty team’s experience will continue our evolution into a powerful multi-brand beauty company,” said Vivian. “Yellow Wood’s partnership allows us to build on the legacy of these brands and accelerate development of our product portfolio across global markets.”

Earlier this week, Suave Brands completed its acquisition of ChapStick.

Yellow Wood’s portfolio now includes more than 50 consumer brands with total retail sales of approximately $3 billion. Additional brands include footcare brand Dr. Scholl’s and Scholl International; Beacon Wellness Brands, led by its anchor brand PlusOne (a sexual wellness device brand); self-tanning brands Isle of Paradise, Tanologist and TanLuxe; skincare brand Byoma; and PPI Beauty, Inc., which includes Real Techniques and Ecotools.